The Champions League kicked off yesterday with very impressive games being played and seeing the top 32 teams of Europe go face to face to reach the final which will be held in Berlin in May of next year. Today, eight games were played and we saw Chelsea tie with Schalke, Bayern Munich beating Manchester City, Roma demolishing CSKA Moskva, Porto also demolishing Bate, PSG who shares the table with FC Barcelona tying with Ajax and Barcelona facing APOEL.
Today we saw FC Barcelona face APOEL and they seemed to struggle to get anything behind the net for the first 25 minutes or so. Marc-Andre debuted for FC Barcelona today as the main man to protect the net, Munir, Sergi Samper, Sandro, Rafinha, who all came from the B team were giving a chance to play for the first team and with this squad Barca thought they would have it easy against APOEL. But that wasn’t the case. Even though they had Neymar and Messi atop with Xavi, Sergi Roberto, Dani Alves, Pique, Marc Bartra, and Adriano all helping to defend and contribute to the team, they couldn’t get much done.
As the first half kicked off, we saw the Barcelona team that we all know, being able to control the ball, keep possession, a lot of passing and finding a way to get the ball in the net. The first opportunity for Barcelona came in the 11th minute when Neymar was fouled by defender Vinicius and gave Messi the chance to take the lead. As he went for the free kick, he was able to get the ball over the wall but goalkeeper Urko Pardo was there to stop the ball and keep the game scoreless. The next opportunity came in the 28th minute in another free kick. From about 35 meters away, Messi took the free kick and Gerard Pique was able to find the ball with his head and get it into the net. With this goal, it put the Catalans on the board 1-0.
The rest of the first half was slow and the majority of the second half was slow as well. It wasn’t until the 88th minute that we saw Barcelona attack again. Sandro had a chance for goal when it came to him against one defender and the goalkeeper, but as he kicked it, it went too wide and kept the game 1-0. Messi had another chance in the 90th minute when Neymar went for goal, but the goalie blocked it and as it deflected of him, Messi ran towards the ball to get it behind the net but Pardo was too quick for him and kept the game 1-0. With 2 minutes left to go, we saw APOEL have its only chance to tie the game up as Manduca went for the goal, Marc Andre was able to leap for the ball and have it go over the net to keep the game 1-0 and give FC Barcelona the win and its first three points of the Champions League.
Barcelona struggled a lot with APOEL, a team from Cyprus with not much experience in the team. Barcelona should have won easily 4-0 with the chances they had against APOEL Nicosia, but they thought it would have been an easy game as Luis Enrique went ahead to use his secondary team over using Jordi Alba and Jeremy Mathieu in the defense with Iniesta, Rakitiç, and Pedro up ahead to help the team win big. With PSG and Ajax as the next contenders, they will have to use their primary team if they want to be on top of the group in points and advance to the knockout stage of the Champions League.
